My name is Edith Garcia and I am a student at CSUDH majoring in IDS. I have been working on obtaining my BA for almost ten years – yes, ten years! It is hard to say exactly when I will graduate because I have a full-time job, a family and I’m only a part-time student. My advisers say it may be another three to four years – hopefully less than more.

I chose chilaquiles because this dish reminds me of my mom and my childhood. It was a special dish that she would make on the weekend. I learned how to make them shortly after I got married because I wanted to make them for my family as well. Although I have made a few changes to my mom’s recipe, my kids love mine as much as hers.

I start by cutting up tortillas and frying them (I fry them completely to get a crunchy texture) and set them aside. After boiling the tomatoes, garlic and chiles (ancho, arbol, habanero, California, guajillo), I put them in the blender along with salt and a couple of eggs to help the sauce stick to the tortilla chips. I warm another pan and pour the sauce and then the tortilla chips and mix them. I prefer to have mine served in a bowl with lots of salted Mexican sour cream and queso fresco as well as queso cotija – one can also add onion and cilantro, but I prefer not to.

I like the red ones as opposed to the green ones and I won’t eat them at just any place because many restaurants make them soggy. I do recommend having them at Cafe Vida in Culver City – all their food is delicious. Chilaquiles take a while to prepare, but they are well worth the time and effort put into them. They’re also a reminder of my family at the table on a weekend, enjoying my mother’s cooking and each other’s company.

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Hello,

My name is Annie Boyd, and I have been a student at CSU Dominguez Hills for three semesters. My major is Interdisciplinary Studies, and I hope to finish in Spring of 2017.

The food selfie is what I ate for dinner today. It is a kale and spinach salad with chicken, dressed with red, yellow and orange peppers. The garlic bread is a rare treat!

I have several favorites foods that I cook regularly. Chicken goes with a lot of dishes, so I find myself eating chicken with vegetables, salads, potatoes, and sometimes by itself. When I eat a meal, I try to add vegetables like asparagus or broccoli. This helps me justify always looking for dessert afterwards. That being said, since I also have a sweet tooth, to avoid some of the high fat calories I intake by eating cakes, and donuts, I buy myself a hot cup of coffee with hazelnut creamer from Coffee Bean, and use it as my dessert. I really have a love for coffee, and can drink it anytime.

I am looking forward to meeting new people in this class, and learning more about other foods in different cultures.

Chicken Mole with beans and rice

Hello all, my name is (the subject line indicates) Hugo Angel (middle name Antonio).

I am a student within the IDS (Interdisciplinary Studies) program with an emphasis in Comparative Cultures. I gleefully announce that this in my last semester of the program and it has taken me 2 years to the semester to complete the program (95% on the weekends). It’s been a ravenous pace as I have taken every intersession in between the Spring and Fall semesters since fall of 2014!

Now on to food! I love to try all types of food but perhaps my favorite food that my mother would make is chicken mole. Chicken mole is a rich and aromatic dish that traditionally is VERY laborious to create (some recipes have literally dozens of ingredients). I say create because I truly feel the dish is an art. Every creator of the dish has their own version but i truly enjoyed the version my mother would make. It is a chicken dish smothered in a dark (almost black) and rich sauce. As a base the sauce has dry roasted chiles that have been rehydrated in chicken broth perfumed with garlic and boiled onions. Other aromas one picks-up are those of toasted sesame seeds, ground almonds and rich peanuts (my mom would cheat with peanut butter!). Perhaps the crowning ingredient is that of Mexican bittersweet chocolate which added a complexity to the dish that I’ve not found elsewhere. All of the mentioned ingredient and others that elude my memory (i think clove) would be placed into the blender and pureed into a sauce that approximated black velvet and once perfectly smooth would be simmered in a large saucepan and just at the right moment, the individual pieces of cooked chicken are to be placed into the dark and inviting sauce. Once the house was filled with the tickeling aroma of chile spice, sweet chocolate and playful peanuts, the plates entree was served with a side of refried beans, rice (sopa de arroz) and steaming hot corn tortillas.Today my mother has alzheimer’s and and her recipe is deep in her fading memory and I wish someone from my family had learned to make this dish (even me!).  The closest version I have been able to find is in a little restaurant in Lomita called El Jacalito.

Birthday Cupcake from Heirloom Bakery

I’m Dr. Perez, an instructor at CSUDH. My majors were in English for my BA, MA and PhDs. I finished my PhD in 2011 at USC.

My food selfie is one I took of my birthday cupcake from Heirloom Bakery in South Pasadena. It’s a homemade (well, cafe-made), grown-up version of a Hostess Cupcake. It was excellent.

My favorite food, at least for today and coming out of our Día de Los Muertos celebration are tamales. I seriously love tamales and not only because they are delicious (which they are) but because of their indigenous roots in the Americas and their associations for me with home, family and the Christmas holidays. Unwrapping a tamale, hot from the steamer and almost burning my fingers is a joy. I like all kinds of tamales, sweet and savory, wrapped in corn or banana leaves, meat or vegetarian. That said, when faced with a variety of tamale choices, my first pick is almost always red pork. There’s something about the sweetness of the corn, the meatiness of the pork and the spiciness of the red chile that makes my mouth water.

This is the first time I’ve taught this class and am looking forward to getting to know all of you.